Political Art

This made me laugh, I liked the logos of different corporations that were placed throughout the picture. I thought that it related to class because there are such strong ties between corporations and the government and Campbell talks about it in The China Study. He speaks about how actual knowledge about things like diet will never really be well known because there are too many ties between the medical association and drug corporations.

Question of the Week

How will the nuclear plant and radiation issues in Japan affect and influence choices regarding nuclear in other countries in the next coming while?

I like the idea of nuclear, it's a great concept, but I think that it has a LONG way to go before we should be constructing nuclear energy plants. Look at Chernobyl, look at Three Mile Island, or even the failure of Yucca Mountain. I think that nuclear has a long way before it can be considered safe enough to be in regular everyday use.

Canadian Reactions to the Federal Budget Cuts for Environmental Causes

https://350orbust.wordpress.com/

On this blog, 350 or bust, the first post was about how Harper is protecting oil companies while doing nothing for the environment. The post talked about how Canadian crime rates are actually dropping and our money is getting spent on new prisons while closing down rehabilitative farms.

http://www.policyalternatives.ca/newsroom/updates/canadas-military-spending-higher-now-any-time-wwii

On this website of Canadian policy alternatives, I discovered that Canadian military funding is now the highest it's been since the second world war. What is the Harper government doing and why is so much money being put into our military since it's not needed?

http://canadians.org/action/2011/env-can-cutbacks.html

This is an article from the Council of Canadians. It talks about how they cut funding from Environment Canada by 1/5 and moved the money into the military. The Council of Canadians feels that this is out of step with what most Canadians want and show how Harper is not on the same page as the general public.

http://www.ourclimate.ca/wordpress/

This is a website published by the Canadian Youth Climate Coalition. Although I couldn't find anything specifically pertaining to the federal budget 2011, I found a lot on oil subsidies and how they need to be cut.

Canadian and American Federal Budgets 2011

This is an article I found on the Canadian federal budget 2011 cut to the environment:

ACTION ALERT: Budget cuts to Environment Canada are unacceptable March 2, 2011 News agencies are reporting that the Harper government is planning a $222-million or 20% reduction in spending at Environment Canada. This includes a $141 million cut to climate change and clean air initiatives, as well as a $19.5-million cut to a federal action plan dealing with contaminated federal sites, and about $3-million in reductions for compliance promotion and enforcement for wildlife and pollution. Meanwhile, in 2010 to 2011, Environment Canada’s program activities amount to just over one billion dollars while National Defence spending is over twenty billion. This is further evidence that the Harper government is out of step with the views of Canadians. According to recent Environics poll, seventy-one percent of Canadians strongly or somewhat agreed with the statement, "money spent on wars and the military would all be better spent on efforts that reduce greenhouse gas emissions and the impacts of climate change.”

This is what I found about the American federal budget 2011 in regards to the environment:

The Republican-controlled U.S. House of Representatives passed sweeping legislation early today that would cut $61 billion from hundreds of federal programs—including many cuts that threaten environmental protections and public health and safety—while shielding oil companies, coal companies, and major polluters from government regulation and oversight. 

H.R. 1 cuts the Environmental Protection Agency's budget by almost a third and hamstrings the EPA's ability to protect the environment and Americans' health. For example, the measure prevents the EPA from protecting communities from mercury, lead, arsenic and other toxic air pollution from cement plants, leaving thousands of children exposed and at risk of asthma, slowed brain development and other neurological disorders. The EPA safeguard that the measure blocks would have reduced mercury pollution by more than 90 percent and saved 2,500 lives each year. 

I feel that both of these cuts are completely unacceptable.  The environment is such an important part of everyone's lives. It provides resources, a place for us to live, clean air for us to breathe, food, etc. We've abused it so badly and these cuts to me show that neither government cares about the environment nor do they recognize its' importance to everyday life. 

http://canadians.org/action/2011/env-can-cutbacks.html
http://environment.about.com/od/environmentallawpolicy/a/House-Budget-Cuts-Threaten-Environment-And-Public-Safety.htm

Political Art

This is a picture of the border between the Dominican Republic and Haiti. Haiti is the brown barren side, while the Dominican Republic is the forest-filled side. I think that this is an interesting picture because I recently learned of tree-thieving of the Haitians of the Dominican trees is very common and is a huge issue. I think this illustrates the issue of what are countries going to do internationally once resource deletion is finally done?

Question of the Week

During the mock question period in class, some questions arose in my mind that I hadn't really given too much thought. How can people in power, such as Stephen Harper, make such bad decisions when there seems to be a perfectly logical one right though or if it's not what Canadians want? What goes on behind closed doors that actually influences people to make these decisions?

Class Reflection

The mock question period was just awesome. I think it's been the most enjoyable thing that we've done all semester in this class.

On Tuesday Ali taught the class and gave a small presentation on political parties then we split into our seminar groups and each were assigned a political party of Canada to be. We looked up policies on environment and health and prepared questions and information to ask the other groups.



My group was assigned the Liberal Party of Canada. The Liberal Party is considered to be the natural reigning party of Canada, having produced great Prime Ministers such as Lyon MacKenzie-King and Lester B. Person. What we discovered about their health and environment policies is that they were actually really interesting, especially their health care idea.

On their health care policy ideas, they had one that was an idea on having a plan so that people with a gravely ill family member can take 6 months paid work to take care of them if the need is there. I thought that was a really interesting idea, and could think of people I know that could have helped in the past.

For their environmental policy ideas, they claimed to want to re-establish Canada as an environmental leader in the world. They wanted to put a cap and trade carbon policy in place, and quadruple Canada's renewable energy sources. They also wanted to preserve 50% of all boreal forests in Canada.

During the mock event, there was a lot of laughter and it was just really funny. It was interesting to see what people thought of things or how they tried to play the roles, such as the Bloc Quebecois. I really really enjoyed the activity.

Big strides, but is it a woman’s world?

http://thechronicleherald.ca/Front/1231869.html


I actually didn't know that it was International Women Day today until I had seen a few Facebook postings about it and then the article being front page of the Chronicle Herald. 


I just think it's interesting because I can't imagine not being able to vote and things like that. I remember in one class I had in high school, our teacher said to us that although feminist is a word that people frown on today or are reluctant to use that if you believe in that women have equal rights, then you are indeed a feminist. 


A lot of the comments on this article were actually really positive. I find that usually people make ridiculous comments on articles and blame everything on Peter Kelly but the comments were light hearted and kind for once. 

Class Reflection:

This week a class was cancelled so we only had one class. I don't really have much to say on it. I had a really hard time keeping up with the pace of the class though on Thursday. I don't know if it's because it's the first week back and I'm still rusty at taking notes or what.

I finished reading the Vanishing Face of Gaia this week. It was a good read although I didn't agree with some of Lovelock's points. I don't think that is a bad thing though because it's just another person's perspective on an issue and knowing the other viewpoint is a good thing.

Question of the Week:

I've been reading a lot of different things on climate change lately between my ESST class and both of my political science classes. It's really interesting the differences between people's reactions to certain events and their opinions on certain events. What is it going to take for the international community to see eye to eye on climate change and collectively take action?

Glue Pour

Last year in my high school art class, we did some stuff on Robert Smithson. Smithson is the credited with being the founder of the Earth art movement. What is Earth art? Earth art is the creation of art using mostly natural and holistic materials. Earth art is usually located in nature and pictures of the creations is what is displayed in a gallery, not the pieces themselves.

This is one of Smithson's pieces, entitled "Glue Pour". It is located somewhere around Vancouver, B.C. I think that although it's not intended to be political art, I think it has that behind it. I think that Earth art images are very moving and they show us how far removed we've become from nature, something that I consider to be one of our issues with dealing with many environmental issues today.

Cell Phones And Brain Cells: Where The Two Meet

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-katz-md/cell-phone-brain-cells_b_828789.html


I thought that this was an interesting article reporting on a study regarding the effect of cell phones on the human brain. It made me think of when they were doing research to see if colony collapse disorder among honeybees in North America was due to cell phone waves and radiation. 


It was weird that although they have found some sort of result that they were unable to interpret it and to give a solid answer to the research that they were doing. I think whether the results show something or not that it shows how as humans we just use stuff because it's cool or helpful and don't think of potential health effects of that technology. 

Wedgeport mom fights IWK to keep baby on life-support

http://thechronicleherald.ca/Front/1230948.html

I thought that this was a really interesting article because it really brings up some issues. It was explained here that the doctors at the IWK want to take this woman’s baby off of life support and she doesn’t want it to happen. It made me think about life support and at what point should the plug be pulled on life support for certain people.

The fact that the doctors say that Bryson (the baby) has significant brain damage and won’t recover also brought up some questions. The mother of the baby stated that Bryson has been responding to sound and touch. Does this mean that eventually the baby could recover? To what extent though? Would the baby have a fulfilling life in this state? Is there a point where recovery options shouldn’t be looked at because of this concept of life fulfillment? 

You Should Have Stayed at Home

For our first blog entry after reading week, we were given a research quest to do. We were told to watch an episode of The Fifth Estate called "You Should Have Stayed at Home".  I had never even heard of The Fifth Estate before (I'm extremely T.V. illiterate), so I had no idea what this video could have been about. What I ended up watching was a 45 minute long thing about the G20 in Toronto over the summer. 


I thought that the episode was really interesting. I work at a summer day camp during the summer and babysit so I usually don't sit down and watch T.V. at all so this is something I knew a bit about but not a whole lot. I found it really resembled the Oka Crisis, but lacked the attention and the care that the Oka Crisis received. What I mean by this is that Canadians aren't standing up afterwards and really questioning why G20 protesters were handled as they were. Maybe because we're all so ethnically different we don't have the bonding and background that aboriginals have? It's interesting to see how passive a country can become over something so violent that happened when it was not okay and stirred a commotion 20 years ago during Oka. 


I was really appalled at the violence that took place, but I must say that I'm not really surprised. I've seen violence from police happen at my school. Clearly not on the same scale, but enough that this didn't really surprise me because I've had negative interaction with the police in high school for doing nothing. 


The temporary jail thing that they had set up was really disgusting, made it seem to me like they were planning to just arrest people and throw them into jail before it even happened. The treatment of people who were arrested was appalling, no dignity at all. There's definitely a difference between being a murderer and being a peaceful protester, but I still think they both deserve to be treated decently and like people. The fact that people were throwing up peace signs and screaming peaceful protest and still got arrested and were subject to police brutality is just awful.